Newham LBC is at the forefront of a new concept designed to put residents in touch with local employers for immediate, short-term work. Richard Manby explains Mariam Ochieng is a single mother of three. She’s been out of work for five years. But last month, Mariam started selling the few spare hours a week she had available for work. Since then, she’s completed nine bookings, each of one to two hours, and has been allowed to keep the earnings on top of her benefits. The employer was East Thames Group – her registered social landlord – which needed short bursts of top-up workers to clear periodic backlogs of envelope stuffing. Mariam is delighted to finally be working, on her own terms, at times when she can be available, around other commitments in her life. Her experience is shared by 220 other people in Newham LBC, who are all part of the pilot for a unique way of working – Slivers-of-time . Once a person has registered with an agency offering the service, Slivers of time allows them to sell spare hours every day to local employers, with just a few clicks of the mouse. It enables employers to purchase 50 people for an hour or one person for six hours, again, with a couple of clicks. The ability to purchase the spare hours of people who can be inducted in a variety of skills could have a profound effect on local services. With a successful east London pilot under its belt, Slivers-of-time is now available for any local authority, RSL or regeneration project in the UK which wants to spread a new kind of economic activity through multiple households in its area. The service was kickstarted by the ODPM’s e-government programme and is free of charge for councils until mid-2008. After this point, it will be funded by a small – around 2.5% – mark-up, built into the worker’s hourly rate. This way of working is only feasible if based on the Internet. Any other way, and the overheads would be crippling. Once an agency is offering Slivers-of-time in a certain area, residents can sell their spare hours easily. All they have to do is get approved by the agency. Then the hours when they are available can be booked into a personalised diary. Contact details are also included. From that point, any vetted employer can access the marketplace and purchase top-up workers for precise hours. Councils can use a fraction of their buying power to seed a local market, which other employers can then enter. Think of a caterer needing staff for a 90-minute lunchtime rush, a cinema needing extra workers when the new Harry Potter film opens, or a retailer with soon-to-arrive trucks needing unloading for an hour. A local Slivers-of-time marketplace will instantly show them who is available. The reason Mariam is working so much for her own landlord is she doesn’t like travelling, Her details stipulate that she wants an extra payment if she is required to go more than quarter-of-a-mile from home. Not only is Mariam in complete control of the work she does, she knows she will be rewarded for working reliability. Sellers in Slivers-of-time are graded objectively, based on the number of bookings completed versus the number of bookings where the timesheet didn’t get signed. In the Newham pilot, the local market is currently paying about 50p an hour more for provenly-reliable Slivers-of-time workers. This way of working is currently low key, but the demand is huge. Accenture estimates 13.7m people in the UK need this way of working at some point each year. And ODPM-funded research reveals 67% of target groups want to try it. Further research by Oxford Economic Forecasters, commissioned by the ODPM and Jobsgopublic, shows savings of £400m a year for government on a mere 5% take up. The Slivers-of-time team is now keen to talk to anybody looking to spend £100,000 a year or more on local work by local people. n Richard Manby is head of local authority outreach at Slivers of time
